While Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tries to ease friction with the United States, chants of "death to America" on Friday may deepen doubts in the West that Tehran is ready for a deal as talks on its nuclear program resume next week. Rouhani's resounding June election victory gave him a popular mandate to reverse Iran's confrontational foreign policy and attempt to win relief from international sanctions imposed over concerns Iran may be seeking a nuclear weapons capability.

Almost every major political figure has a social-media presence today. Chechen strongman Ramzan Kadyrov is an Instagram addict, as is Syria’s first family. Hugo Chavez was a prolific tweeter, and Fidel Castro blogs occasionally. Iowa senator Chuck Grassley live-tweets University of Northern Iowa Panthers women’s volleyball matches. Yet nobody’s quite as strange as Iran’s Supreme Tweeter, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

In June, Hassan Rouhani was elected president of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Rouhani ran as a reform candidate, and many have interpreted his victory as a harbinger of a possible liberalization or rationalization of Iranian domestic and foreign policy. But the dominant figure in Iranian politics is not the president but rather the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has warned that US was "not trustworthy", after former US officials and legislators urged diplomacy with Iran’s incoming president Hassan Rowhani. “I said at the beginning of the (Iranian) year that I am not optimistic about negotiations with the US, though in the past years I did not forbid negotiating (with US) about certain issues like Iraq,” he said on Sunday during an “Iftar” party meal that breaks the daily fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has never been happy about the status of the Iranian presidency — neither during his own tenure, from 1981-1989, nor during the terms of his three successors.